Refactoring HTML: Improving the Design of Existing Web Applications (Addison-Wesley Signature) (Hardcover)

“Wow, what a compendium of great information and how-to’s! I am so impressed! Elliotte’s written a book whose title comes nowhere near to
doing it justice. Covering much more than just refactoring, this book explains how to do it right the first time around, in a clear and lucid
voice. Harold obviously knows his stuff. A must-read!”
—Howard Katz, Proprietor, Fatdog Software

“After working with people who require the skills and tools necessary to continually improve the quality and security of their applications, I
have discovered a missing link. The ability to rebuild and recode applications is a key area of weakness for web designers and web application
developers alike. By building refactoring into the development process, incremental changes to the layout or internals efficiently averts a total
rewrite or complete make-over. This is a fantastic book for anyone who needs to rebuild, recode, or refactor the web.”
—Andre Gironda, tssci-security.com

“Elliotte’s book provides a rare collection of hints and tricks that will vastly improve the quality of web pages. Virtually any serious HTML
developer, new or tenured, in any size organization will reap tremendous benefit from implementing even a handful of his suggestions.”
—Matt Lavallee, Development Manager, MLS Property Information Network, Inc.

Like any other software system, Web sites gradually accumulate “cruft” over time. They slow down. Links break. Security and compatibility problems mysteriously appear. New features don’t integrate seamlessly. Things just don’t work as well. In an ideal world, you’d rebuild from scratch. But you can’t: there’s no time or money for that. Fortunately, there’s a solution: You can refactor your Web code using easy, proven techniques, tools, and recipes adapted from the world of software development.

InRefactoring HTML, Elliotte Rusty Harold explains how to use refactoring to improve virtually any Web site or application. Writing for programmers and non-programmers alike, Harold shows how to refactor for better reliability, performance, usability, security, accessibility, compatibility, and even search engine placement. Step by step, he shows how to migrate obsolete code to today’s stable Web standards, including XHTML, CSS, and REST—and eliminate chronic problems like presentation-based markup, stateful applications, and “tag soup.”

The book’s extensive catalog of detailed refactorings and practical “recipes for success” are organized to help you find specific solutions fast, and get maximum benefit for minimum effort. Using this book, you can quickly improve site performance now—and make your site far easier to enhance, maintain, and scale for years to come.

Topics covered include

•    Recognizing the “smells” of Web code that should be refactored
•    Transforming old HTML into well-formed, valid XHTML, one step at a time
•    Modernizing existing layouts with CSS
•    Updating old Web applications: replacing POST with GET, replacing old contact forms, and refactoring JavaScript
•    Systematically refactoring content and links
•    Restructuring sites without changing the URLs your users rely upon

This book will be an indispensable resource for Web designers, developers, project managers, and anyone who maintains or updates existing sites. It will be especially helpful to Web professionals who learned HTML years ago, and want to refresh their knowledge with today’s standards-compliant best practices.
This book will be an indispensable resource for Web designers, developers, project managers, and anyone who maintains or updates existing sites. It will be especially helpful to Web professionals who learned HTML years ago, and want to refresh their knowledge with today’s standards-compliant best practices.

“Wow, what a compendium of great information and how-to’s! I am so impressed! Elliotte’s written a book whose title comes nowhere near to
doing it justice. Covering much more than just refactoring, this book explains how to do it right the first time around, in a clear and lucid
voice. Harold obviously knows his stuff. A must-read!”
—Howard Katz, Proprietor, Fatdog Software

“After working with people who require the skills and tools necessary to continually improve the quality and security of their applications, I
have discovered a missing link. The ability to rebuild and recode applications is a key area of weakness for web designers and web application
developers alike. By building refactoring into the development process, incremental changes to the layout or internals efficiently averts a total
rewrite or complete make-over. This is a fantastic book for anyone who needs to rebuild, recode, or refactor the web.”
—Andre Gironda, tssci-security.com

“Elliotte’s book provides a rare collection of hints and tricks that will vastly improve the quality of web pages. Virtually any serious HTML
developer, new or tenured, in any size organization will reap tremendous benefit from implementing even a handful of his suggestions.”
—Matt Lavallee, Development Manager, MLS Property Information Network, Inc.

Like any other software system, Web sites gradually accumulate “cruft” over time. They slow down. Links break. Security and compatibility problems mysteriously appear. New features don’t integrate seamlessly. Things just don’t work as well. In an ideal world, you’d rebuild from scratch. But you can’t: there’s no time or money for that. Fortunately, there’s a solution: You can refactor your Web code using easy, proven techniques, tools, and recipes adapted from the world of software development.

InRefactoring HTML, Elliotte Rusty Harold explains how to use refactoring to improve virtually any Web site or application. Writing for programmers and non-programmers alike, Harold shows how to refactor for better reliability, performance, usability, security, accessibility, compatibility, and even search engine placement. Step by step, he shows how to migrate obsolete code to today’s stable Web standards, including XHTML, CSS, and REST—and eliminate chronic problems like presentation-based markup, stateful applications, and “tag soup.”

The book’s extensive catalog of detailed refactorings and practical “recipes for success” are organized to help you find specific solutions fast, and get maximum benefit for minimum effort. Using this book, you can quickly improve site performance now—and make your site far easier to enhance, maintain, and scale for years to come.

Topics covered include

•    Recognizing the “smells” of Web code that should be refactored
•    Transforming old HTML into well-formed, valid XHTML, one step at a time
•    Modernizing existing layouts with CSS
•    Updating old Web applications: replacing POST with GET, replacing old contact forms, and refactoring JavaScript
•    Systematically refactoring content and links
•    Restructuring sites without changing the URLs your users rely upon

This book will be an indispensable resource for Web designers, developers, project managers, and anyone who maintains or updates existing sites. It will be especially helpful to Web professionals who learned HTML years ago, and want to refresh their knowledge with today’s standards-compliant best practices.
This book will be an indispensable resource for Web designers, developers, project managers, and anyone who maintains or updates existing sites. It will be especially helpful to Web professionals who learned HTML years ago, and want to refresh their knowledge with today’s standards-compliant best practices.